Web browsers are an integral part of the internet. Web browsers access information from web servers, and present the information to users in a convenient, easily understood manner.
Web browsers receive web pages by sending requests for content to servers that host the web pages. The requests for content often include user identifying information such as cookies, IP addresses, referrer headers, etc. Servers may collect this user identifying information and maintain profiles on users who access their web pages. However, this user identifying information is not always necessary to request content from servers.
Most modern browsers support cookies, and allow a user to specify a security setting that affects how the browser uses cookies. At a low security setting, all cookies are accepted. At a medium security setting, a user may be prompted to accept or deny each cookie. At a high security setting all cookies are denied. A browser may also allow a user to choose to reject cookies from specific domains, disallow third-party cookies, and/or delete all cookies when the browser is closed. These cookie management techniques may inadvertently disable desirable web site functions. For example, a security setting that blocks all cookies from the domain google.com would prevent cookies associated with searches made by Google® from being transmitted, but would also interfere with the use of Gmail® (Google's® internet mail service).